Mel Gibson's candid interview - 'I didn't hurt anyone'

Beleaguered actor Mel Gibson says he doesn't think Hollywood will forgive him for his troubled past.

Mind you, he doesn't think there's actually anything to forgive.

The 56-year-old actor has been involved in a string of controversies over the years, including a DUI arrest in 2006 (soundtracked by an anti-Semitic tirade), a highly publicised and acrimonious split from former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, and most recently, a tabloid-baiting feud with screenwriter Joe Eszterhas.

In a new interview with ComingSoon.net, Gibson shares his thoughts on his troubled past, his movies - don't hold your breath for a Lethal Weapon 5 - and the much-maligned Maccabees project.

Asked whether he thinks Hollywood is a forgiving town, he replied: "No it's not. They have to forget. I don't even think they're vindictive. I don't think they think there's reason to forgive.

"And forgive what to begin with? What are they asking for? It's almost like can you please forgive me for what? What did I do, really?

"It is kind of ridiculous. So it's kind of hard to pinpoint exactly what needs to be forgiven and I don't consider that anything does because I didn't hurt anyone."

He added: "But you know, hey that's life. It ain't easy and it's not fair. You've just got to slip the old water off the back and move on."

The Get the Gringo star also spared a moment during his confab to address his bitter feud with Hollywood screenwriter Eszterhas.

The pair has been at loggerheads since the Basic Instinct scribe released an audio recording of Gibson screaming at him during a visit to the actor's Costa Rica home last December.

In the recording, the Lethal Weapon star chided Eszterhas for reportedly failing to deliver an acceptable first draft of a script for Maccabees, a now-shelved movie about Jewish hero Judah Maccabee that Gibson had been attached to direct.

Gibson could be heard yelling and screaming on the tape, "Why don't I have a first draft of The Maccabees? What the f**k have you been doing?"

The recording followed a nine-page letter Eszterhas wrote to Gibson, accusing him of anti-Semitism.

"I've come to the conclusion that the reason you won't make The Maccabees is the ugliest possible one. You hate Jews," he wrote.

The letter emerged after Warner Bros announced it had put the project on hold - suggesting that Eszterhas's script lacked "a sense of triumph".

'I lost my nutter with him...'

Gibson has his own take on what was recorded on the taped tanty.

"Okay, so a guy gets paid to write a screenplay and doesn't turn anything in for 14 months," Gibson said about Eszterhas. "That's a serious problem. Not even an outline, so I lost my nutter with him."

He continued: "I developed a Viking script almost a year after he started and I already had a second draft and he hadn't even given me an outline. And he was at my home on a working holiday and he didn't even bring one word. And he never intended to write a script. His whole intention was to set me up somehow."

But despite the public head-butting, Gibson maintains that the project is still on the boil.

"I DO want to make it and I will make it. And that'll be a great film," he said. "And over the course of 14 months did you not think I told him what the story was? Give him my images? Give him my ideas and dialogue? You should see the books written on the subject.

"So my best ideas I put in front of him, hoping that he took some of those, but he squandered them and alluded to them in his so called screenplay which I swear he must have written in three days," he added.

"It's really bad with heinous, bad, shonky, D grade dialogue. And after 18 months of waiting, from when we started talking, that's what came in. And of course the studio also recognised it as not very good."

He also ruled out a return to the Lethal Weapon franchise.

Gibson starred in four Lethal Weapon films between 1987 and 1998.

Asked whether he'd be interested in doing a fifth movie, Gibson said: "No. I think the way things are going with Total Recall, they'll just remake those somehow.

"Though it's really tough to replace Danny [Glover]. He was so amazing in those things. It was a good gig for us. It worked. But we knew it would.

"I had fun on every one of them," Gibson added, "and they were lucrative and good to me."

It was reported last year that Warner Bros were planning to reboot the Lethal Weapon series, featuring the same characters but an entirely new cast.